Speaking of crying “persecution!”, the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission, a.k.a. Christian Reconstructionist Gary Cass, has released a press statement outlining what they call the top ten examples of “Christian bashing” for 2008. Here are Cass’s and his porn-stache’s top ten:

Okay, it’s mostly jokes, legitimate political commentary, distortions of legal moves and comments — that is what he calls “Christian bashing.” But you see, under Cass’s Reconstructionist America, none of this would be allowed. And what comes in at number one?

During and after the November campaign stories flooded in of pro-Prop 8 signs being taken, people verbally and physically assaulted, church property and private automobiles vandalized, and person’s jobs and pastor’s lives threatened simply for exercising their right to campaign and vote in support of traditional marriage.

While all acts of violence and vandalism are deplorable, Cass is taking the time-honored tactic of taking small, isolated incidents and treating them as if they are a part of a nationwide orgy of violence. Official statistics, however, paint a very different picture. According to the FBI, hate crimes against gays and lesbians continued to increase in 2007, contradicting the overall trend of fewer hate crimes since 2006. Crimes based on sexual orientation very nearly tied those based on religion for second place:

Hate Crime Offenses, 2006

Hate Crime Offenses, 2007

Race

4,737

52%

4,724

52%

Religion

1,597

18%

1,477

16%

Sexual Orientation

1,415

16%

1,460

16%

Ethnicity

1,233

14%

1,256

14%

Disability

94

1%

82

<1%

TOTAL

9,080

100%*

9,006

100%*

Totals don’t add up due to additional
multi-category hate crime offenses.
Percentages don’t add to 100%
due to rounding errors.

But as we noted earlier, hate crimes based on sexual orientation continue to be the most violent by far. Attacks based on sexual orientation are much more likely to be physically violent than in any other category:

If Christian leaders want to be taken seriously, they should lead by example, and decry the real bashing taking place in America, not the phoney hysteria Cass is trying to whip up. He claims that “Every day in America serious Christians face increasing hostility at work, school, and in the culture because they stand for their faith and values.” And gays aren’t? When’s the last time you heard of a Christian in America being gang raped because of a sticker on her car?

â€œEvery day in America serious Christians face increasing hostility at work, school, and in the culture because they stand for their faith and values.â€

Translation: “Serious” Christians relentlessly preach to people who don’t want to live according to their draconian notions of “morality.” The people being preached to express annoyance or resentment and assert to live as they please as long as they don’t hurt anyone. “Serious” Christians then claim they’re being persecuted.

INSTANCE #3: Barack Obama Defames Christianity
According to research into President Elect Obama’s own statements about faith, and an examination of Obama’s position on moral issues, CADC has determined that by any biblical and historic Christian standard, Barack Obama is not a Christian, although he claims he is a “devout Christian.”

An organization bashed a Christian while complaining about “Christian bashing”

I recently got into a heated argument on YouTube with a fundie. He was EXTREMELY upset by the “rampaging homosexuals” who attacked Prop. 8 supporters. When I pointed out that gay people don’t target others for murder because of their religion he counter that they did and cited two examples. One, a woman who had be raped and murdered by a gay man, and second, a young man who was strangled by an attempted rapist. When I pointed out these victims were not targeted because of their Christianity, he began what I can only describe as frothing at the mouth, claiming hundreds of “gay friends” who had pointed out these murders for him. He also claimed some coroner had stated that murders committed by “gays” tended to be more violent than other types of killings. He really seemed to turn all the reputable facts around to show how persecuted all the millions of “good Christians” are by us filthy (his word” homo-sex-uals!

Martha Stout ph.d., author of The Sociopath Next Door, offers that the best clue to the sociopath without conscience is the repeated pity play.

Something weâ€™ve been seeing a lot of lately.

[A]fter twenty-five years of listening to victims, I realize there is an excellent reason for the sociopathic fondness for pity. As obvious as the nose on oneâ€™s face, and just as difficult to see without the help of a mirror, the explanation is that good people will let pathetic individuals get by with murder, so to speak, and therefore any sociopath wishing to continue with his game, whatever it happens to be, should play repeatedly for none other than pity.

I heard this guy interviewed on a local Christian radio program here in the Twin Cities. After listening for most of the hour about I found that his examples of “persecution” are no more profound than the ones above.

From listening to him and others on my local fundie Christian radio station, I’ve come to the conclusion that fundie Christians consider persecution to be as simple as telling them they are nuts for believing something, as well as the rest of us just not accepting their view on politics, sex and culture, because “god told them that they are right”.

The best approach to this nuttiness is to keep up on what goes on at your legislature, expose and get rid of crazy legislators, here we got the wonderfully delusional Michele Bachmann out of our state senate and into the Congress where she became a state and national embarassment rather than still working to create dangerous legislation at the state level.

I think these people are well-aware of the violence gay people experience in this country. They just don’t care, and I think they want there to be violence against us so that we’ll be driven back into the closet.

Their “persecution” rhetoric is the classic logic of a bully, and it’s among the clearest evidence of how dangerous they are. This is the same sort of thing that fascists used to do: Persecute others while falsely claiming that they’re persecuting you.

I’ve long been of the opinion that the religious right is a very serious threat to this country, and to gay people in particular, and its leaders and members shouldn’t be simply dismissed as crazies who will fade away on their own. If they ever reach a position of significant power at the national level, things could become very dangerous.

I know that sounds like hyperbole, but it’s not a long ride from the superficial niceness of people like Rick Warren and the outright evil of the reconstructionists. How many Germans could have foreseen the Holocaust before the Nazis took power?

One fact missed here is that while the number of hate crimes committed against religious people is almost the same as the number against people for sexual orientation (and that doesn’t generally mean against straights) the percentages are grossly different.

Religious people make up about 80% of the population or 240 million or so. Most assaults on sexual orientation are against gay people who are around 15 to 20 million. Compared to religious people it would appear that a gay person is more than 10 times as likely to be the victim of a hate crime than a religious person.

This comment has been deleted for being utterly irrelevant. I presume there are appropriate web sites for discussing personality aspects of Star Trek characters. This certainly isn’t one of them. — Jim B.

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